[Word Bearers 03] - Dark Creed Read online

  “Marduk I am unsure of. Nevertheless, once the captains of the 34th are turned, the Host will belong to us.”

  How far along are we?

  “Our order grows steadily within his Host, my lord. Several officers within the 34th were most eager to turn. It seems that some of them harbour personal grudges against their Dark Apostle.”

  Good. That is something that can be exploited.

  “Which leaves us with Sarabdal,” said Ankh-Heloth. “I fear that he will not be swayed. Already he has exposed several members of our cult within his ranks. Its growth stifles.”

  He knows, pulsed Ekodas. He is a danger to us.

  “What would you have me do, my lord?”

  I believe that we can solve the problem of Belagosa and Sarabdal in one. Be ready.

  “And Marduk?”

  Let the Brotherhood do its work.

  The astropath screamed and went into wild convulsions.

  Hands held him down and the hilt of a knife was jammed between his teeth to stop him biting his own tongue. He registered them only dimly; his mind was filled with the horrific after-images of the searing vision that had brought on his fit.

  It was more than an hour before his convulsions ceased, leaving him shivering and aching all over. He lay immobile on a pallet, his arms and legs strapped down.

  A shape loomed over him and a voice intruded on his nightmare. It was insistent, and would not leave him in peace. He cried out for death, cried out for the Emperor to take him. He had seen too much, much too much, and he begged for release.

  “You shall be granted the Emperor’s mercy,” said a deep voice. “Just tell me what you saw.”

  The words tumbled from him in a torrent, and while only perhaps every tenth word was decipherable, they painted a clear picture: death was coming to Boros Prime. He spoke of eyes of fire, of a burning flame upon an open book, of living flesh inscribed with symbols that made his stomach clench painfully even to think of it. He babbled insanely, speaking of souls devoured by ravenous gods that dwelt in the dark beyond. He spoke of spinning silver rings that rotated within themselves, conjuring darkness, and how hell was coming to claim them all. Finally, sobbing, he begged for release.

  The tortured astropath smiled in relief as the barrel of a bolt pistol was pressed to his temple. The shot was deafening in the holding cell. Blood splattered the walls.

  “What is it, Coadjutor?” came the voice of Proconsul Ostorius over the grainy vox-unit. “What did the astropath foresee?”

  “Chaos,” was all that Aquilius said as he holstered his bolt pistol.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Burias hurried to catch up with Marduk as he stormed through the corridors of the Infidus Diabolus.

  He glanced at Marduk’s face, which was a furious mask.

  “Will it work?” he asked.

  “It has to,” said Marduk, “else we are all dead.”

  Sirens blared, and Stormbirds and Thunderhawks were prepped for launch. The Host’s Dreadclaws had been roused, their daemon essences stirred for the coming engagement in case of potential boarding actions. The Host’s warrior brothers were undergoing final preparations, mournfully intoning catechisms of defilement and retribution.

  “I don’t trust Ashkanez,” said Burias.

  Marduk’s silence invited more.

  “I do not understand why you allowed him into the Host. He is not one of us. It is bad enough that Kol Badar still lives, but Ashkanez?”

  “I don’t need to explain myself to you, Burias.”

  The Icon Bearer scowled. “They will betray you. Mark my words. The First Acolyte covets power, and Kol Badar hates you enough to help him take it. Then, the 34th will become just another subservient Host under Ekodas. Let me deal with them.”

  “I will deal with Kol Badar myself. For now, he serves a purpose. As for Ashkanez, he is First Acolyte. Of course he seeks to replace me, just as I sought to replace Jarulek, and he the Warmonger before him. It is our way.”

  “Let them do it? You need warriors around you that you can trust! You need a Coryphaus—”

  “I trust no one!”

  “You trust me,” said Burias.

  “You I trust less than most, Burias,” Marduk replied.

  The possessed warrior looked affronted. “I am your loyal comrade and friend. I always have been.”

  “A Dark Apostle has no need of friends,” said Marduk.

  “My loyalty has and ever will be to you,” said Burias, “and as long—”

  “Don’t think me a fool, Burias,” snapped Marduk. “You are loyal to me only as long as it benefits you. I know this. You know this. Let us not pretend.”

  They glared at each other for a long moment before the Icon Bearer lowered his eyes.

  “You are a warrior, Burias, a fantastically gifted one, and you serve well in that regard. The same can be said of Kol Badar. Ashkanez has yet to prove himself. If he does not, then I will dispose of him. Be my champion, Burias. Forget the rest. Now get out of my sight,” said Marduk. “Go do something useful.”

  “Whatever you wish, blood-brother,” said Burias, before stalking away.

  The chambers set aside for Magos Darioq-Grendh’al’s workshop were located deep within the stern of the Infidus Diabolus. They were crowded and claustrophobic, packed with salvaged mechanics, tech-implements, crippled servitors, discarded weaponry and engines of all kinds. Cylinders filled with bloody amniotic fluid stood in rows against the walls. The magos’ experiments bobbed inside, vile blends of living flesh, metal and daemon. Further products of his enthusiastic tinkering crawled amongst the heaps of machinery, repulsive by-blows that moaned and twitched.

  Once, Darioq had been a devotee of the Cult Mechanicus of Mars, a techno-magos worshipping the so-called Omnissiah, the God in the Machine. Now he was much more than that. Now he was Darioq-Grendh’al.

  His body was concealed within a black robe, its edges hemmed with bronze wire. A single gleaming red eyepiece shone from within his deep cowl. As bulky as one of the Terminator-armoured Anointed, Darioq-Grendh’al moved with stilted, mechanised movements. Four immense, articulated arms extended from the servo-harness affixed to his frame, one pair curving over his shoulders like the stabbing tails of a desert arachnoid, the other extending around his sides like pincers. A pulsing cluster of umbilical cords and semi-organic cables trailed behind the tainted magos, hard-plugged into his spine.

  Spread-eagled upon a table before the magos was a slave, arms and legs restrained. The magos was working on the figure, clinically cutting and dissecting flesh and organs. The tortured slave’s skin had mostly been ripped from its body, exposing musculature, and it moaned in torment beneath the magos’ ministrations.

  Banks of brain-units sat in bell jars within refrigeration tanks, thin needles puncturing their lobes. The magos had up to five brains plugged into his mechanised body at any one time, picking and choosing which of the hemispheres would best suit his current pursuit. Many of them bore evidence of corruption.

  Unfettered by petty moral constraints, the corrupted magos revelled in a universe of studies that had formerly been disallowed, and he now worked at a feverish, obsessive pace.

  Thinking machines, xenos tech, mech/daemonic blends, experimental warp-based weaponry, engines utilising the immaterium itself as their power source; all these things had been deemed heretical and blasphemous, outlawed as deviant and fundamentally incompatible with the reverence of the Omnissiah. None of the strict and uncompromising edicts of Mars mattered to him anymore.

  Servo-arms, fleshy protuberances and mechadendrite tentacles worked independently of each other as the corrupted magos busied himself at his work. He needed no rest and gained what sustenance he required from the bodies of the slaves. Day and night the magos toiled. The Mechanicus code inhibitors implanted in his brain-stems had long been removed, and he found himself with a whole wealth of new areas of study now open to him—enough work for a thousand lifetimes.

  None of this mattere
d to Inshabael Kharesh, sorcerer of the Black Legion. He was Warmaster Abaddon’s personally appointed envoy, and all that interested him was the device.

  The sorcerer’s face was devoid of colour. Black tendrils pulsed within his flesh, runes of Chaos that were in constant flux. His hair was straight and long, as pale as spiders’ silk. The colourless hue of the sorcerer’s skin and hair made the glittering brilliance of his sapphire eyes all the more startling.

  The sorcerer was staring at the device.

  It hung motionless in mid-air, caught in a beam of red light. It was a perfect silver sphere roughly the size of an unaugmented human heart.

  The Nexus Arrangement.

  Three immense hoops of black metal surrounded the sphere. Each was carved with Chaos icons and runes of power. It was this construct that bound that device to the will of the Word Bearers. Those rings were currently motionless. Only when the device was activated would they begin to turn.

  “It is remarkable,” said Inshabael Kharesh.

  “The power the device harbours is like nothing recalled in any Mechanicus data record,” said Darioq-Grendh’al. “Nothing stored in any of Darioq-Grendh’al’s brain-units compares to this sublime construction. Darioq-Grendh’al is only able to tap into the smallest fraction of its power—no more than 8.304452349 per cent of its attainable output—and yet even so it can achieve much.”

  “The Warmaster is very interested in the device,” said the Black Legion sorcerer. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the cries of the slave the magos was torturing.

  “My lord will be interested in you as well, Darioq-Grendh’al,” Kharesh added.

  “Lord Abaddon, Warmaster of the Black Legion and genetic descendant of Horus Lupercal, will be interested in the mech/flesh unit daemon symbiote Darioq-Grendh’al, formerly Tech Magos Darioq of the Adeptus Mechanicus?” said Darioq-Grendh’al, his emotionless voice overlaid with the growls and snarls of the daemon infused into every muscle, fibre and cell.

  “Of course,” said Kharesh, smiling. “You are a singular creature, a true blend of human, machine and daemon.”

  The magos did not answer, intent on his plaything. The slave’s cries had been stifled now, which pleased Kharesh. One of Darioq-Grendh’al’s tentacles had pushed down its throat, and it pulsed with peristalsis as it bored through the slave’s stomach lining, feasting upon organs.

  “You have no ties to Marduk or his 34th Host,” said Kharesh, picking his words carefully.

  “It was Marduk, Dark Apostle of the 34th Host of the Word Bearers Astartes Legion, genetic descendant of the glorified Primarch Lorgar, who brought Grendh’al forth from the empyrean,” said the corrupted magos. “It was Marduk, Dark Apostle of the 34th Host of the Word Bearers Astartes Legion, genetic descendant of the glorified Primarch Lorgar, who released Darioq from the shackles imposed upon him by the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars,” he added.

  “True,” said Kharesh, smiling. “But it is also true that the Warmaster Abaddon has a far greater access to archeotech caches and Dark Age technology than the XVII Legion.”

  The magos paused. Only for a second, but it was enough to show the Black Legion sorcerer that he’d been heard.

  “The Warmaster is benefactor to many Dark Mechanicus adepts,” he added, “and many Obliterator cults. I think you would find much to your appreciation were the Warmaster to become your benefactor, Darioq-Grendh’al.”

  “That is a most interesting notion, Inshabael Kharesh, sorcerer lord of the Black Legion, formerly of the Sons of Horus, formerly of the Lunar Wolves, genetic descendant of Warmaster Horus Lupercal.”

  “Something to think about,” said the sorcerer, hearing the mag-locked doors hiss as they opened.

  Marduk strode in, closely followed by his First Acolyte and Coryphaus.

  “And how is Darioq-Grendh’al today?” said Marduk.

  “Darioq-Grenhd’al,” said Darioq-Grendh’al, “has been having an interesting conversation with Inshabael Kharesh, sorcerer lord of the Black Legion, formerly of the Sons of Horus, formerly of the Luna Wolves, genetic descendant of Warmaster Horus Lupercal.”

  “Oh?” said Marduk. “And what pray has the sorcerer got to say for himself?”

  “The fallen magos was telling me how he has yet to access even ten per cent of the potential power of the Nexus Arrangement,” interposed Kharesh. “Its potential is quite… staggering.”

  “I see,” said Marduk.

  “Inshabael Kharesh, sorcerer lord of the Black—” began the magos.

  “I know who you mean,” interrupted Marduk.

  “—has informed Darioq-Grendh’al that the Warmaster Abaddon is benefactor to many Dark Mechanicus adepts and many Obliterator cults,” said Darioq-Grendh’al. “He thinks that Darioq-Grendh’al would find much to his appreciation were the Warmaster to become his benefactor.”

  “Really,” said Marduk.

  Inshabael Kharesh merely shrugged his shoulders, refusing to be cowed by the Dark Apostle.

  “Would you deny the truth of the statement, Apostle?” he said.

  “The device is mine, sorcerer,” said Marduk, “Just as Darioq-Grendh’al is mine. I will not let either of them leave the 34th Host.”

  “We shall see,” said the sorcerer, smiling.

  “Yes, we shall,” said Marduk. Idly, he picked up something from one of the magos’ workbenches. His eyes widened as he recognised the spherical device.

  “A vortex grenade?” he said in wonder. The most powerful man-portable weapon ever conceived by the Imperium of Man, a vortex grenade was a priceless artefact capable of destroying anything—anything—that it touched.

  “A gift,” said Inshabael Kharesh, reaching out to take it from Marduk’s hands. “For the magos.”

  Marduk refused to relinquish his hold on the deadly artefact, and for a moment the Dark Apostle and the sorcerer were locked together, unwilling to back down. Finally, Inshabael shrugged and let go.

  “A bribe,” growled Ashkanez.

  “You would dare bring such an item aboard my ship without my knowledge?” said Marduk, holding the vortex grenade under the sorcerer’s nose.

  “It is a bauble, nothing more,” said the sorcerer. “I thought the magos might like to study it.”

  “Secure this,” said Marduk, handing the vortex grenade to Kol Badar. The Coryphaus took it gingerly.

  “One cannot help but wonder why the creators of the Nexus Arrangement—the necron—had not used the device themselves,” said the sorcerer, changing the subject.

  “It hardly matters,” said Marduk.

  “Perhaps not,” said Inshabael Kharesh with an enigmatic half-smile. Marduk suppressed the urge to strike him.

  For the millionth time in the last few months, Marduk cursed the day that the Council of Sicarus had agreed to allow the sorcerer to accompany Marduk’s 34th Host.

  While it was true that the Word Bearers and Black Legion had once been close, much of that good will and brotherly respect had evaporated upon the death of the Warmaster Horus. While Abaddon might have claimed the title of Warmaster for himself, it afforded him none of the respect that Horus had garnered from the XVII Legion. Of course, the Black Legion’s strength was unparalleled—their ranks outnumbered those of the Word Bearers almost ten to one—yet many within the Word Bearers regarded it as but a pale shadow of its former glory, its self-proclaimed Warmaster worthy of contempt. Nevertheless, it was all but certain that it would be the Black Legion who would form the mainstay of the final crusade against the hated Imperium, and because of that, the Word Bearers held their peace.

  Marduk begrudged Kharesh’s presence upon his ship. He hated the self-satisfied, mocking gleam in the whoreson’s crystalline eyes as he observed the daily rituals of the 34th Host and studied Darioq-Grendh’al’s work on the xenos Nexus Arrangement device.

  Perhaps more than anything else, he hated the fact that there was someone aboard the Infidus Diabolus whose life was not his to take.

  He shifted his atte
ntion towards the twisted magos.

  Darioq-Grendh’al’s head was turned to the side, staring down in morbid curiosity as he prodded the now lifeless slave laid out before him. His tentacles continued to burrow through the corpse’s innards, chewing and slurping. Part metal, part living tissue, part daemon, the mechadendrites were sinuous and writhing things, moving with a life of their own.

  The stink of Chaos was strong on the corrupted magos, and though his heavily augmented body was fully swathed in heavy black cloth, Marduk could see it bulge and swell, writhing from within as Darioq-Grendh’al’s body altered its form, in constant flux.

  Marduk smiled to see the magos so changed, to see such a being of order, uniformity and structure released to become a true creature of Chaos.

  “We make transference within the hour, Darioq-Grendh’al,” said Marduk. “The device will be ready?”

  “Yes, Marduk, Dark Apostle of the 34th Host of the Word Bearers Astartes Legion, genetic descendant of the glorified Primarch Lorgar,” said Darioq-Grendh’al. “It will be ready.”

  The room was dim and circular, with tiered steps around the edge. A two-headed eagle, the symbol of the Imperium marked the marble floor, but otherwise the room was bare of ornamentation. Marble columns supported the high domed ceiling. The walls of the room had been raised, hiding the view beyond from sight, and their photo-chromatic panels had been dimmed; in direct sunlight, the hololithic figures arranged around the room were difficult to see.

  There were over forty figures standing on the circular steps, the higher-ranked individuals positioned on the lowest tiers. Only ten of those figures were physically in the room, including Aquilius himself and his Proconsul Ostorius, both fully garbed for war. The other six were officers of the Boros Imperial Guard and the Fleet Commanders of the Imperial Navy stationed at the Kronos star fort.

  Aquilius recognised the Legatus and Praefectus of the Boros 232nd from his inspection of their ranks. Though neither was of the highest rank, and they stood on the upper tiers, the 232nd’s combat record was faultless and the high legate of the Boros Guard had requested their presence personally. Ostorius had acquiesced to the appeal, and Aquilius had been pleased to see that Praefectus Verenus had accompanied his Legatus. He had seen something in the man, something akin to the pride of a White Consul. A shame that he was too old for indoctrination into the Chapter, for he believed he would have made a fine Space Marine.